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Hacker Andrew Auernheimer Placed In Solitary Confinement For Tweeting From Prison
May 14, 12:05AM
Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer has been placed in "administrative segregation," prison shorthand for solitary confinement for "investigative purposes." Supporters believe he was locked down and given no Internet access because of his ability to send Tweets to a third party who relayed them on his private account. Auernheimer has not sent electronic messages since April 8.Wednesday Night's Human Matchmakers And Coaches Take Some Of The Work Out Of Online Dating
May 13, 11:07PM
If existing dating websites aren't working for you (or you're too busy to try them out), you can get help from paid matchmakers and dating coaches on the just-launched service Wednesday Night. According to the startup, users connect their Facebook accounts and are then given three recommendations. (You can see a mock-up of a recommendation email below.) If they're interested in dating one of them, they then pay $50 and are set up with a date on Wednesday night at 8 p.m. (or occasionally Thursday). They're also connected with a dating coach who can provide advice via email or text.P2P Currency Exchange TransferWise Raises $6M Led By Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures, With Participation From SV Angel, Others
May 13, 11:04PM
Here's some encouraging news for the European startup scene, and London in particular. TransferWise, the online currency exchange that uses the crowd to undercut traditional money transfer services, has announced that it's closed a $6 million series A round led by Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures -- the first investment in Europe by the PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor's international fund.Q&A Pioneer Formspring Says It's Been 'Saved' From The Deadpool, Is Now Under New Management
May 13, 10:39PM
Formspring, the pioneering Q&A site that allowed people to invite other internet users to "ask me anything" anonymously, is apparently back from the brink. In a tweet and a company blog post, Formspring announced that it has been "saved" and is now "under new management." It was just two months ago that Formsping announced plans to shut down, with founder and CEO Ade Olonoh writing in a company blog post that it had "been challenging to sustain the resources needed to keep the lights on." At that time, the company planned to close down its online Q&A platform on March 31st and eliminate users' access to their data on April 15th.Akimbo Lands $850K From Rackspace Co-founder & Others To Bring Prepaid Debit Cards Into The Social, Mobile Era
May 13, 10:37PM
With the proliferation of smartphones, we're now able to use these mobile, mini computers to do just about everything we would do on our desktop while on the go. Yet, in spite of this evolution, mobile payments seems to be lagging behind. We use our phones to capture pictures and video, and share them instantaneously, but the average smartphone carrier is less comfortable with the idea of paying for a meal by swiping their phone. People want a mobile wallet, and it seems only a matter of time before someone gets it right, even if a winner has yet to emerge.Facebook Kills Social Roulette, The App With A 1/6 Chance Of Deleting Your Facebook Account
May 13, 9:30PM
If you want a digital detox, you're going to have to pull the trigger yourself. Social Roulette is an app that would delete one in six users' Facebook account data, but its founder confirms it's been blocked by Facebook so it no longer functions. While there's no specific policy prohibiting apps from deleting your data, Social Roulette is clearly counter to Facebook's mission and business model.Google Commemorates The 37th Anniversary Of Atari's Breakout With Image Search Easter Egg
May 13, 8:59PM
If you're an old-school gaming nerd, then you might remember a little game released by Atari called Breakout. The idea was simple, just hit a ball around and break things. Don't let the ball get past you, or you lose.3D Printing Is The Future, But What Kind Of Future?
May 13, 8:29PM
The crescendo of media reports about the advent of a DIY printable firearm has caused an understandable uproar. In the wake of so many high-profile, mass-casualty incidents involving firearms -- and a lot of impotent rage by our elected officials -- it seems counterintuitive that, as we circle the wagons around the idea of passing rational gun legislation at the federal level, we can also literally create a gun.LanguageTwin: A New Way For Language Students To Practice What They've Learned
May 13, 8:25PM
Learning a language is never easy. One thing that's usually missing in the way students learn a new language is the ability to use their new skills while talking to a native speaker. LanguageTwin, a startup I met at the Willamette Angel Conference in Corvallis, Ore., last week, aims to do just that. The service brings together language learners for peer-to-peer interactions to give students the opportunity to apply what they've learned in the classroom while having a conversation or acting out real-life scenarios.The Austin TC Meetup + Pitch-Off Is Go-Town On May 30: Get Tickets Here!
May 13, 8:21PM
Who's ready to party, ya'll? That's right. It's finally happening. The TechCrunch Meetup + Pitch-Off series is officially underway, starting with the beautiful, historical and sometimes rowdy city of Austin. We want to see who has the chops to represent the great state of Texas in our 60-second pitch-off competition.Twitter Acquires Big Data Visualization Startup Lucky Sort, Service To Shutter In Months Ahead
May 13, 8:03PM
Lucky Sort, a Portland, Oregon-based startup behind a visualization and navigation engine called TopicWatch that helped to discover patterns in live data streams, has been acquired by Twitter. Terms of the deal were not immediately available, but the company has announced via its website that it will be shuttering its service in the coming months, and several members of the team will now be relocating to Twitter's San Francisco offices to join the company's "revenue engineering department."Google I/O 2013: What's On Tap For Nexus Smartphone And Tablet Hardware
May 13, 7:58PM
Google's big annual developer conference kicks off on Wednesday, and while Android lead Sundar Pichai has downplayed big new announcements at Google I/O this year, we've also seen reports that suggest the Nexus line of Google-branded hardware won't go completely untouched.Daft Punk Fights Piracy With Convenience, Streams Entire "Random Access Memories" Album Days Before Release
May 13, 7:56PM
After weeks of teasing, endless itty-bitty leaks, and about a zillion radio plays of the one track they'd released so far, the entirety of Daft Punk's new Random Access Memories has just hit iTunes, days before the official release. "Why would they do this?" you might ask. "Isn't this just giving pirates a hi-fi copy to spread around?""Myspace For Millionaires" ASMALLWORLD Pivots Into A $105-A-Year VIP Travel Club
May 13, 7:25PM
ASMALLWORLD launched its invite-only social network for the rich and famous in 2004. Today it's becoming even more exclusive and pivoting away from its advertising model, as its relaunching as a subscription travel club where the elite meet to enjoy perks around the globe. With $105 a year and an invite, ASMALLWORLD (ASW) helps you make friends with its trusted 250,000-member community wherever you go.ItsOn's New Zact Service Is Rewriting The Book On Wireless Plans
May 13, 7:20PM
It seems like every other day an upstart wireless service provided inks a wholesale deal with someone like Sprint or T-Mobile and effectively sells access to those big carrier networks under a different banner. And every other day, I ignore most of them, because they're just so damned boring. Zact isn't boring. In fact, Zact -- an upstart service provider created by Andreessen Horowitz-backed ItsOn that uses Sprint's network -- has the best approach to wireless plans I've seen in a long time.Routing Around Apple's Restrictions, AppCertain & Others Bring Enterprise-Level Control To Consumers In The Interest Of Child Safety
May 13, 7:09PM
In the interest of protecting children, a new iOS application called AppCertain has debuted a monitoring application aimed at parents. The app, whose goal is to alert parents about the nature of the applications their kids are downloading, involves the use of a “configuration profile” – special software Apple originally intended for enterprise use, not consumer-facing apps sold through its App Store marketplace. But Apple reviewed the application – for longer than most, founder and CEO Spencer Whitman tells us – and subsequently approved it. For how long that will remain the case, however, is unknown. “We think we are on a gray line with respect to Apple, but we don’t really know,” Whitman admits. Configuration profiles, for those unfamiliar, were designed for the enterprise environment, allowing I.T. departments to manage the iPhones and iPads used by a company’s employees. They’re typically employed by Mobile Device Management solutions which use the software to configure, track and/or restrict a number of system-level settings like Wi-Fi, VPNs, app settings, permissions, and more. But more recently, a handful of startups have started using these same profiles to work around Apple’s App Store’s restrictions in order to accomplish tasks which wouldn’t otherwise be possible. Apple is aware this is happening, and seems to be handling each app submission on a one-off basis for now. We’ve seen mobile data compression utilities like Onavo and Snappli take advantage of the technology to intercept, re-route, and compress web data in order to save users’ bandwidth, for instance. Social search engine Wajam also uses a configuration profile to inject its own search results into Safari, though this is done outside of the Apple App Store. Onavo is still live on the Apple App Store today, though Snappli has since disappeared. (We reached out to the company for details, but have yet to hear back. It’s possible that Apple simply didn’t care for the fact that Snappli had publicly shared data showing how iOS users were dumping the then newly-launched Apple Maps application.) But frankly, it seems odd that Apple would knowingly ever let these types of applications into its consumer-facing app store in the first place, given the security risks they could pose. If used unscrupulously, a malicious configuration profile could remote control a user’s device, manipulate user activity, and hijack their sessions, or so explained security researchers at Skycure back in March. AppCertain isn’t a malicious developer, though, and itsOwnerListens Raises $1.1M To Keep Angry Customers From Running To Yelp
May 13, 7:06PM
Gone are the simple days of running a small business; gone is the time when a disgruntled customer's voice had a lifespan of a few days. We live in the future now, where reviews live forever. Where a few lil' red stars can make or break your business. OwnerListens is trying to give customers a more direct alternative to Yelp — and they've just raised over a million bucks to do it.At I/O, Google Will Be Tracking Things Like Noise Level And Air Quality With Hundreds Of Arduino-Based Sensors
May 13, 6:56PM
If you're attending Google I/O this week, you will be a part of an experiment from the Google Cloud Platform Developer Relations team. On its blog today, the team outlined its plan to gather a bunch of environmental information happening around you as you meander around the Moscone Center.Facebook's Longtime Communications Director Larry Yu Departs To Join Upstart PR Firm Pramana
May 13, 6:22PM
Larry Yu, the public relations executive who has headed up Facebook's corporate communications operation for five years and helped steer the company through the publicity blitz surrounding its IPO, is leaving the social networking company. He announced his departure this morning in a post on Facebook, writing: "Nearly five years ago, I joined some friends at a privately-held company called Facebook to help a small team scale and expand upon the company's story. That journey was, in a word, crazy. And fun. Terrifying. And gratifying. So I'm off to do it again. I'm joining my friends Brandee, Brian and Sean to help build The Pramana Collective, a project-focused communications consultancy that works with cool companies."
Zapier Launches API-Monitoring Service To Catch Issues And Outages
May 13, 6:12PM
Zapier, a service that automates tasks between online services, has launched a tool that monitors 200 APIs, sometimes catching an outage before the provider does. The new tool monitors the uptime and downtime of every API on Zapier. It is designed to monitor the realtime status of popular web APIs and their impact on customers that use the Zapier service or just want a good resource to monitor how APIs are behaving. Each API can be monitored via SMS, instant message, email or any number of methods that are supported by Zapier's core product.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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